There has been NO WARMING since 1998. That’s a FACT.

This is a lie.

Either 2 or 3 (I forget which) of the warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.

Don’t forget, we’re talking about global average temps here, not any local stuff.

I absolutely despise people who try to pull such tricks in a scientific debate, who attack the opponent instead of sticking to the actual science.

Hey, preaching to the choir here.

Go tell that to all the AGW-deniers who treat evidence like it doesn’t exist!

Every attack on opponents of the AGW theory is really just proof of the fundamental weakness of that theory and the dishonesty of its supporters.

Eh?

How so?

AFAICT, every shred of climatological data supports the following conclusions:

1) GW is happening, more rapidly in the last 30 – 40 years than ever before.
2) Human activity is by far the largest contributing factor to this trend.
3) If left unchecked, it will be a bad thing for us humans and our modern intensively-populated societies.

Also AFAICT, every argument against AGW runs along the lines of “those scientists are lying” or “wait, there isn’t enough data yet”. I have yet to see any cited piece of anti-AGW “evidence” that withstands even the most casual scrutiny.

I loved the translation of terms into common and scientific language. I’m very familiar with that issue.

And then – bang – it turns into yet another idiotic excuse to insult people who do not tow the AGW line!

I’ve seen this at least 3 or 4 times over the last few months: perfectly good theories about psychology, denial, fabrication of false truths, religious believes, fanatics etc. and just when you think “that’s a pretty good summary of the issue”, the author makes the completely spurious claim that this proves that AGW skeptics are really just fools, idiots, deluded souls, when in fact the exact same theory can very well be used to explain the behavior of the AGW fanatics, if not more so.

I absolutely despise people who try to pull such tricks in a scientific debate, who attack the opponent instead of sticking to the actual science.

Every attack on opponents of the AGW theory is really just proof of the fundamental weakness of that theory and the dishonesty of its supporters.

If the scientific case was really so strong, then there would be absolutely no point in insulting opponents. None. But it is not a scientific issue. Never was. It’s pure politics and hence, the debate occurs along the same lines – AGW supporters consider that it is more important to attack their opponents than to back up their claims with facts.

The idiocy of claiming that skeptics don’t look at the data is really painful when you look at who the opponents are, e.g. Dr.Lindzen, Professor of climate science at MIT. Dr.John Grey from NZ, official expert reviewer of the IPCC report, Prof.Curry, head of the institute of atmospheric science of the University of Georgia etc.

I can provide a list of hundreds of scientist with RELEVANT scientific backgrounds, including most recently a Physics Nobel Price winner from Sweden, who question the theory and its simplistic claims. None of them have any problem with the language of science. None of them are idiots, delusional or paid by special interests – unlike a lot of AGW supporters!

So please drop the act!

There has been NO WARMING since 1998. That’s a FACT. Since 2010, there’s even a very strong cooling trend. NONE of the predictions by the AGW crowd have come true. All of them turned out to be completely false. No one expects ALL predictions of a theory to be correct, especially not in a field of such complexity. One would expect, however, that a correct theory gets at least some predictions right. Or that serious scientists refrain from making predictions when they clearly don’t understand how things work.

There currently isn’t a single climate scientist who can make a valid prediction for 1, 5, 10, much less 100 years. Or who could explain accurately what factors truly control the climate.

The entire theory that a SINGLE, minor factor could have an overwhelming effect that would lead to catastrophic effects in an extremely complex system, which is not even understood, is fundamentally dishonest and contrary to every principle of science.

So please keep your arrogance to yourself and FINALLY admit that the issue is not even close to being decided. And immediately stop calling scientific opponents “deniers” or face the tag “fanatic of the church of global warming”, “eco-Nazi” or “Al Gore lap dog”.

You’ll do yourself and everyone else a huge service.

The reason that so many common people don’t believe in human caused global warming is that you make a very poor arguement for it. But as people who look at the world through a narrow prism, you can’t see the flaw in your arguement.

Actually, this is wrong in two ways.

First, the argument for AGW is actually very strong. The data pretty much all point at global average temps increasing, and that human activity is the cause.

Second, the main reason so many common people don’t accept it is because of the lies spread by the deniers about, for instance, the quality of the data, the integrity of the researchers, the validity of the models, or the existence of contrary data (there is, AFAICT, zero data that genuinely conflicts with AGW as a conclusion).

Third, a reason supporting my second point is that the mainstream media have reported such items in a “he said” / “she said” mode, without reference to the actual data, or any investigation into which side has the more credible argument.

That scientist who used a “trick” to get the right data results used a trick to get the results that he wanted. Because you are so invested in man made global warming, you don’t see that he cheated to get the results that he expected. And if he didn’t, he has to expalin, just as I would have to if I used a trick, how what he did was valid.

Your statement is just wrong.

Those scientists don’t cheat, they use statistical “tricks” to extract real data from noisy signals. Digital signal processing works along the same kind of principles.

There is no need to explain what they did, because they are using valid statistical techniques to find out what the data actually are. They have not tweaked the data to get the result they wanted, they have used mathematical tools to find out what the result is.

The thing is, I would answer “yes” to both, and I’ve been called a denialist a time or two. Global temperature has been increasing ever since the end of the little ice age, in the late 1600′s.

This is a non-sequitur. The “little ice age” was a local, not a global phenomenon.

Human activity has been significant contributing factor in the form of deforestation, air traffic, pollution and urban development. Even CO2 plays a small part. My estimation would be that CO2 contributes something around 0.1C – 0.2C to the total temperature increase of 0.7C.

If I accept your figures as correct (and I’m not sure that I do, since you don’t even make a case, you just present them as a guess), CO2 contributes perhaps 14 – 28% of the total increase. And you call this a “small part”. What would constitute a “large” part?

With so many causes, even 28% could be the largest individual factor.

For some weird reason though*, only 82% of the scientists polled answered yes to both. This was obviously not enough to claim of overwhelming majority, so they started throwing out questionnaires that were answered by “less than worthy” scientists. They needed to find a subgroup where almost everyone agreed with those two questions.

They didn’t bother with the obvious ones, like status, education level or number of publications. What they ended up with was all scientists that had published in the previous two years peer-reviewed research that fell primarily in the climate change field.

The problem with this approach was obvious. Out of the original 10257 scientists they were left with 77, of which 75 (97%) agreed with both of the questions. I have seen this kind of polling before on womens studies. You start with a answer and then try to somehow come up with it.

Why don’t they do a simple poll along the lines of “Do you think human CO2 emissions will cause a catastrophic rise in global temperature?” and see what they get? I think I know why.

The word “catastrophic” is too subjective. Whether the likely increase in global temps from human activity is catastrophic or not depends on both a value udgement and your projected impact of AGW.

Also, you focus your question on CO2 only, when it is but one of several factors causing AGW. I am not sure anyone has worked out exactly what contribution each factor makes, so trying to parse it down to the contribution of CO2 alone is disingenuous. And largely irrelevant. It is sufficient to know that CO2 emitted as a result of human activity is a major factor in AGW.

While we can know (from measurement of isotope ratios) how much atmospheric CO2 was derived from fossil sources, we don’t know exactly how much each factor contributes to AGW. I am sure that there are some approximate figures, but lack of time precludes a hunt for them today.

Climate change is not caused by “man” – it is caused by “burning of fossil fuels”.

And intensive agriculture.

And deforestation.

And damming rivers.

And CFCs.

And making cement.

Basically, while the burning of fossil fuels is the biggest contributor to AGW, there are several other human activities that substantially contribute to it. It is wholly appropriate to refer to the current rapid warming trend as human-caused or anthropogenic.

The trick was used to hide the fact that the trees that were used were poor proxy for temperature. The CRU emails revealed that for some reason their tree ring data stopped being a good proxy since 1960. What made them think it was valid before that? Because it fit what they expected to see.

A moose dropping his antlers under the tree will cause the tree to have a growing spurt larger that few tenth of a degree increase in temperature. A bear marking his territory by mauling the bark will cause the tree to slow its growth much more than few tenths of a degree of temperature drop will. What is needed to rule out this kind of events is extremely large sample size, which none of the tree ring series produced by the hockey team have.

A more interesting direct long term weather measurement can be found from Tornio, a town in the northern part of Finland. Remember that global warming is supposed to be most evident in the polar regions where Tornio is located.

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/trends-in-the-ice-breaking-date-in-the-tornio-river-finland

The ice breaking date (the rather dramatic day that the river ice is thin enough to break by itself in the spring) has been recorded in Tornio for every day since 1693. This is a graph that cannot be “adjusted”. Just collection of absolute raw data. Can you see any signs of anthropogenic global warming in the graph? Can you see acceleration? What you can see is the slow but steady recovery from the little ice age. The effect of CO2 increase in the late 1900′s can not be found at all. If anything the rate has slowed down.

What I find interesting is compairing that graph to the sunspot graph found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

While not having any kind of training in statistical analysis, I used photoshop to merge those graphs together, flipping the other upside down and stretching them to fit. What I found was something interesting. Every time there is a spike in the sunspot number, the ice breaks much earlier on that year than the years right before and right after. Also the long term trend seems to affect the ice breaking date by making later dates more unlikely.

One could say that the sunspot number has definitely an effect on Tornio river ice breaking date. Could it have a global effect? IPCC says no, there is no possible way sunspots could affect global temperature. Svensmark says yes and CERN CLOUD experiment says perhaps. I think there must be. Those graphs are just too similar to be a coincidence. And if there is… how much of the warming in the last 200 years is left to be caused by CO2 increase?

I will keep the AGU article close as a reminder while writing myself! Thanks for sharing.

I fight groupthink many ways. Among theses ways I try to have friends who aren’t cops. Also, I try to interact with people in non-law enforcement, or at least non-crime report ways. I get out of the Batmobile and I talk to people. I try to get to know and understand them and their point of view. So when a scientist tells me that his house was robbed, I really know that he means that his house was burgled. When commiting theft, you “rob” a person, you “burgle” real peoperty (ie: a house).

The reason that so many common people don’t believe in human caused global warming is that you make a very poor arguement for it. But as people who look at the world through a narrow prism, you can’t see the flaw in your arguement.

Most of we common folk accept that man creates pollution and that the pollution is bad for us. Most of us want to mitigate this pollution as much as possible. But come on, we are the primary cause of a 0.5 % increase in global temperatures over the last century? Really? Volcanoes have nothing to do with it? This stuff about ice ages and thaws is just denier propaganda? 20,000 years ago ice sheets covered about a third of the northern hemisphere, as far south as modern day Nebraska or Colorado. These sheets were mostly gone by 1804, assuming Lewis and Clark weren’t deniers, too. The Industrial Revolution began in about 1840. If you are right, and global warming is mostly caused by man, where did the northern ice sheets go? (to be fair, I ask the same question to people who don’t believe in global warming)

That scientist who used a “trick” to get the right data results used a trick to get the results that he wanted. Because you are so invested in man made global warming, you don’t see that he cheated to get the results that he expected. And if he didn’t, he has to expalin, just as I would have to if I used a trick, how what he did was valid.

Several years ago it was revealed that the head coach of the New England Patriots had hacked into the radio system and was able to hear what opposing coaches were calling down to the field. This included play calls. Everyone knew that this was cheating, but to this day, many sports fans excuse this behavior because a team should be able to overcome this type of cheating. IT WAS STILL CHEATING!

My advice. If you want the public to accept what you find, occasionally step back and look at your work. Expaline it to a layman and actually listen to his critique. Are you really seeing what’s there, or are you seeing what you expect to find?

Actually, it’s a quite a funny story how they came up with that 97% of all scientists agree with climate change theory.

They decided to conduct a scientific survey. For reasons unknown, they decided to rule out solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers from their survey. They sent a questionnaire in an email form to 10257 earth scientists in the fields of geology, oceanography, paleontology and geochemistry etc. 3146, or 30.7% answered.

The interesting bit is here. The two main questions were:

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The thing is, I would answer “yes” to both, and I’ve been called a denialist a time or two. Global temperature has been increasing ever since the end of the little ice age, in the late 1600′s. Human activity has been significant contributing factor in the form of deforestation, air traffic, pollution and urban development. Even CO2 plays a small part. My estimation would be that CO2 contributes something around 0.1C – 0.2C to the total temperature increase of 0.7C.

For some weird reason though*, only 82% of the scientists polled answered yes to both. This was obviously not enough to claim of overwhelming majority, so they started throwing out questionnaires that were answered by “less than worthy” scientists. They needed to find a subgroup where almost everyone agreed with those two questions.

They didn’t bother with the obvious ones, like status, education level or number of publications. What they ended up with was all scientists that had published in the previous two years peer-reviewed research that fell primarily in the climate change field.

The problem with this approach was obvious. Out of the original 10257 scientists they were left with 77, of which 75 (97%) agreed with both of the questions. I have seen this kind of polling before on womens studies. You start with a answer and then try to somehow come up with it.

Why don’t they do a simple poll along the lines of “Do you think human CO2 emissions will cause a catastrophic rise in global temperature?” and see what they get? I think I know why.

*: I think some of those that answered knew what was being asked between the lines and answered that and not what was being asked literally.

I’m not sure how I feel about being a “pastor”, though. Of course, in Hebrew, “rabbi” means teacher, so maybe that’ll do!

Thanks again.

Except James Hansen quoted in #111 goes ahead and seems to use it in the colloquial meaning; but all should be aware that MEDICAL researchers use it in the second definition.